Desh
=Stats= Attributes: : Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2 : Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 4 : Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3 Abilities: : Talents: (9/13) Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Dodge 1, Empathy 1, Insight 2, Integrity 2, Primal Urge 1, Resistance 1, Subterfuge 2, Vigilance 2 : Skills: (13/18) Animal Ken 2 (Horses, Ranch Animals), Drive 3 (Cars, Trucks), Larceny 3, Marksmanship 4 (Pistols, Rifles), Performance 1 (Guitar, Singing), Research 1, Stealth 2, Survival 2 : Knowledges: (5/6) Finance 1, Investigation 2, Lore 1 (BSDs, Garou, Vampire), Occult 1, Rituals 1 Advantages: : Backgrounds: Allies 1 (Grandpa Ilias), Fetish 3, Pure Breed 3 (6), Rites 2, Totem 2 : Rage: 3 : Willpower: 5 : Gnosis: 3 : Merits: Animal Magnetism (1), Crack Driver (1), Good Old Boy (2), Perfect Liar (3) : Flaws: Compulsion (1), Geas (3), Intolerance (1), Mystical Prohibition (2) : Gifts: Smell of Man, Speed of Thought, Truth of Gaia : Rites: Greet the Hope-Star, Greet the Moon, Rite of Silence, Celestial Navigation, Dedication, Questing Stone Freebies *Chargen **+5 Attributes (Dexterity) **+6 Backgrounds (3 Pure Breed, 1 Totem) **+2 Talents (1 Vigilance) **+2 Knowledge (1 Investigation) **+1 Willpower **+4 Gnosis (2) **+7 Merits **-7 Flaws ***Total: 21 *Experience 2 **+5 Attributes (Perception) **+8 Talents (1 Resistance, 2 Subterfuge, 1 Vigilance) **+10 Skills (1 Research, 2 Stealth, 2 Survival) **+1 Willpower ***Subtotal: 24 ***Total: 45/45 Specialties Appearance Cool, confident, and unflappable. In any situation where Desh might be in trouble, he always seems in control, and others believe it. Marksmanship Quick-drawing, and any other fast movements with the pistol. Flaws Compulsion His car. His gun. Keeping them both clean and working in order, because it's going to be just his luck when the Strider Ancestor spirits finally come back to hunt his ass for being lazy. Geas The family curse. Knock down inflated pride wherever it dwells, and teach lessons through tricks and jokes as necessary. Be like Coyote. Intolerance Pride. Desh has got a big issue with Garou in particular and their tendency to throw up their noses, especially at the lower ranks. Mystical Prohibition Coyote can not be harmed in any serious way. Any of Coyote's (or another trickster spirit's) jokes, lessons, or tricks can not be meddled with unless in a similar manner (with another trick) that will still offer some kind of meaning to the subjects. =Family History/Fetish= In the heat of a Texan August, 1901, Reuben Levy made a gun. It was a double-action heavy revolver based on a Smith & Wesson model, and every last screw, pin, and inch of metal was handcrafted for a singular purpose: Kill Coyote. Yeah, sort of like that ‘Bill’ movie, but if Uma Thurman had a beard. Anyways, maybe it was the summer heat that drove him towards vengeance, or maybe he was just obsessed. Either way, he got busy real fast preparing a Rite of Binding to contract a devil’s cocktail of spirits into a series of talen bullets. He wanted God’s assurance it would tear Coyote to pieces, and he swore up and down fierce-like that the trickster was going to taste some of his own. So the deal was that it had been about six months since the youngest of his three ranching sons had died in a terrible accident on the heels of a bad practical joke, all courtesy of the Great Coyote. He got angry as a hornet’s nest, let me tell you. See, the problem was Reuben’s pride: He was a big, well-to-do Athro Theurge Strider, and he made sure everyone knew it. Guy was a powerful fetish maker, spirit consultant, and summarized up and down by most folks as “a raging douche,” with a few more hard consonants and whatever variation on “shithead” they had back in the day. The more he travelled, and the more he opened his mouth, the brighter the red bulls-eye he painted on himself. The plans were struck at the ranch of his oldest son, Zachariah, a kin. The middle son, Isaiah, was young in the Ragabash ways, but more than happy to plan an Umbral hunt with his pappy to avenge his fallen brother. Of course, they weren’t going after Big Coyote, but one of his kids. Consequences didn’t matter; this was about pride. But Zachariah was smart and wouldn’t have anything to do it with. So both father and brother slipped into the Umbra with angry words on their lips, and Zachariah was forced to wonder if they’d ever be coming back. In the Near Umbra, Coyote was tracked; summoning was a bad plan, as Coyote knew they were coming. He was probably snickering his ass off, or however spirits get their rocks off. I imagine he had a plan all ready, as both father and son got trapped in a desert of twisted memories, so the story goes. Every mirage of Coyote (or what they thought might have been Coyote) was shot at and attacked until there was only one talen bullet left. Zachariah later guessed they must have been in there a few days just chasing their tails. He had no real achin’ desire to get on Coyote’s bad side. ‘Course, Coyote started to get kind of tired once his planned bag of tricks was gettin’ thin, so he figured ‘yeah, let’s screw with ‘em once more and then get out of here’. The spirit split the pair up with a bit of bad argument, and then confronted Isaiah (who now had the gun) to turn him against his father, and probably shoot him. But, heh, my family’s always been a bit unpredictable. Coyote received a bullet for his troubles, and enraged, attacked Isaiah in reprisal for his. When Reuben finally caught up moments later, Coyote was weakened, Isaiah was dead, and the gun lay all beautiful and useless on the ground. All of Reuben’s pride and vengeance drained, then; that made two sons – two he’d have to bury. So rather than finish off the spirit, Reuben shoved and sealed the weakened Coyote into the gun as a final act of irony. ‘See how you like it.’ When Reuben finally made it out of the Umbra, not all quite there I’m told, the weapon was handed off to Zachariah for safekeeping. But Reuben couldn’t stand to be anywhere near it or the ranch where both fallen brothers lay buried. He took back to the roads as we Striders tend to do, and probably died in Harano some years later. He was my great-great-great-grandfather. Lots of greats there; been a pretty straight line. So the gun collected a lot of dust in Zachariah’s safe box. It wasn’t until his daughter, Dinah, had a moment of desperation that the gun was handled again, some years later. A Theurge, like her grandfather, Dinah had been raised on the story of Coyote and my family’s ‘lucky’ history. Zachariah had made very clear, so it goes, that the gun was to be an unhandled relic. Maybe he was waitin’ for Reuben to send him some word, but that never happened. Being a ranching mad though, there weren’t many qualms about him teaching his daughter how to use firearms in general. She grew up between the ranch and traveling around with relatives until somewhere around her fourteenth birthday, when she was handed off to the nearby Sept, Last Boundary. The dust bowl of the 30’s caused a great deal of trouble for more than just ranchers and farmers in Texas and elsewhere. With the great dust clouds came Wyrm beasts hidden beneath the shroud, and the Depression era did little in bolstering people against bane possession. Especially out on the fringes and homesteads, hope had a real tendency to dry out. It was no different in Perdition, Texas, where Zachariah’s ranch was set just outside of town. It began as a quiet thing, but when people started acting strangely, and weird creatures were tracked around Zachariah’s acreage, Dinah came rushing home, leaving Ilias, her son, with her kin husband. Thing is, Coyote was watching. Well, a different Coyote than the one in the gun. Dinah had always had a curiosity for the weapon, and in her younger years, the spirit had tried tricking her to pick the thing up and wake his brother inside. But Dinah had proved far more controlled than grandpa and uncles, and worked her way well into Fostern before ever having to be confronted with the thing again. ‘Course, that just so happened to be the moment she came home to investigate the ranch. Again, whispers and tricks pushed her to consider the weapon as an option once it became clear that the area was indeed infested, and it was only a matter of time before her father was attacked. It happened at night, before her backup had arrived to help purge the town. It looked hopeless with just her and Zachariah barricaded inside, so Dinah finally picked up the gun and slipped into the Umbra to make a deal with the gun Coyote using his brother as a mediator. That’s a story, right there. Still, when the gun spirit woke up, he was all sorts of angry. But unlike grandpappy, Dinah was a humble woman, and further fueled by desperation, she agreed to a few things: Pick up where the spirit had been forced to leave off with his attacks on pride and the ill-humored. And then, not only would a pack be formed under Coyote, but she and the family would act as Coyote’s agents so long as they wished for the gun-spirit to play nice. In return, Coyote would stick around and empower the gun’s bullets with a bit of trickery: The bullets might appear normal, but once they left the gun’s barrel, things would always get Interesting. (See writeup below). Dinah and Zachariah both made it through that night, thanks to Coyote, and the Wyrm problems in the town were dealt with in the following days. The gun was eventually handed to Dinah’s military kin son, Ilias, for safe keeping. Ilias handed the weapon down to his oldest son Karim, an Ahroun. When Karim failed to produce any offspring, he eventually gave the gun to his brother’s Garou son, Desh – me. =Past= So, take a deep breath and I’ll summarize a bunch; I’m sure you’re tired of listening to my voice by now, huh? Ilias raised both Karim and his younger son, Joseph, on the road. Having lead the military life in his younger years, he wasn’t content to just settle down and raise a family peaceably. He treated both his sons like little soldiers – even drilled them like soldiers – and they each settled comfortably into this role: Karim was dropped off at Last Boundary when he was twelve, and Joseph eventually joined the Marines to fight overseas. School was a casual thing, and the government was never real happy with Ilias Levy, but he managed. Both sons had experience fighting the Wyrm by they their teen years, though playing nice with Coyote tends to not get you much in the way of trust; makes getting rank a bit difficult in most places, who knew? Still, Karim completely dedicated himself to the Gaian cause like a good Ahroun, and Joseph fought for something a little more. After his first overseas tour, he married a Strider kin named Jasmina, a travelling dancer and musician, who gave birth to me under the half-moon on July 2nd, 1987. Mom and I never got to understandin’ each other real well, not until it was just me and her left. Dad made it a point to be at home as much as possible to teach me everything he knew about everything worth knowing: guns, how to fix a car, how to drive, hunt, ranch at grandpa Ilias’ place in Texas, fight, ride, whatever. Both mom and me traveled with him whenever he had the chance to carry us around the globe. Still, I spent a lot of time bein’ ‘homeschooled’ in music and other important things by mom (wherever ‘home’ was at the time), or spending the summer travelling around the States with Karim, who told me all about what being a Garou meant: credit fraud, identity theft, and running back to Gramps’ ranch when the law got too smart. But must importantly, fighting the Wyrm and a bunch of other important-sounding things. He called it the Litany. I was ten when mom received news that dad had died in the field. It was a hard blow to everyone, but particularly to her. Grief lead to anger, and anger lead to some harsh words between her and Karim, until he finally hauled me off to Last Boundary for ‘training’. I didn’t talk to mom again until years later and shortly before her death, but that’s another story. Last Boundary became a home as much as any place until my rite of passage, which Karim made it a point to run. I was fifteen, and it was just a few months after my Firsting, which involved tryin’ to learn ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper,’ and frenzying on my guitar. That was a good guitar, too. =Rite of Passage= Not far from Perdition, Last Boundary is essentially a large collection of ranches and farmland with a Sept centered around a hidden watering hole of a Caern. Kin keep the businesses running, and the Garou keep the land safe and clean of any taint and pollution. A crossroads rests nearby, so it’s not odd to have a member for a few months and then not see them again until a few years later, but they’re usually always welcomed ‘home’ like family. Usually. Regardless, the cattle could be considered the life blood of the area, so it was in all seriousness that Karim pushed me to solve a little a problem: Cattle was disappearing, and people were beginning to blame each-other. Find and judge whoever was responsible. You got a week. Awesome. I started with the standard Philodox tact of questioning those involved, trying to get them to slip in a lie, or tryin’ to read them to see if anything seemed strange. But that wasn’t workin’ too well, as no one had proof, but everyone had an Opinion. So I took a page from Coyote’s book, which I was pretty familiar with at that point, through Karim. I set up a few traps. Best one was this: It started with sprinkling around a few rumors that a certain ranch was going to get in a truckload of cattle. They were actually a donation from grandpa Ilias that hadn’t been marked and tagged yet, at least in the typical sense: each one had been marked with a special ink beneath the fur. You had to know where look for it. So I waited and watched. It was Jeffrey Taggart’s men that came for the cattle – a local rancher kin with a failing business. Or at least it had been failing. When I followed them, though, they didn’t take them back to Taggart’s place, but this secluded valley that smelled kinda odd. Like blood mixed with grass. They left all nervous-like. I waited. What eventually came was a smokin’ hot lady… that wasn’t so smokin’ after her jaw suddenly unhinged and she started to chow down on the poor beasts. I had to sit through her ‘meal’ like a bad horror movie, but followed her back to Taggart’s place where she just happened to be a ranch hand. I listened around for awhile, came by the next day and questioned some people, and eventually found out she was new. As of a few months. Sweet. I had her pulled aside and sniffed for the Wyrm, which was festering inside her. That turned out to be rather bloody experience in itself, but no one died (except her). So hey, it all worked out. I had to judge Taggart for hiring a wyrmthing, intended or no, and trying to sabotage the other ranchers, but that was the easy part. I took a note from family history, and gave him some of his own: If he didn’t want the authorities involved, or the Garou on his back, he’d have to work for those other ranches, regardless of what happened to his own ranch. Hey, them’s the breaks. So he pulled a pistol on me, but I was faster. Judges-With-A-Fast-Draw they called me after. And that’s when Karim gave me the gun. He had never been much for firearms anyways. Now if only he’d have given me grandpa Ilias’ Pontiac GTO… =Present= After the Rite, Karim and I went back to the road. We travelled around between more Septs than I care to name, helping where we could or being chased out by the humorless. We never bothered hoardin’ much money; credit fraud and identity theft becomes surprisingly easy once you do it enough. Hunting after bounties (supernatural or no) always worked us some nice temporary cash if we thought we could manage the whole shebang without breaking the veil. Most real cash though, we always sent back to gramps. Karim died gloriously the year I turned eighteen. He was in his late thirties, but never made it above Fostern. Maybe that’s just been the family lot since Reuben screwed us all over. I get the feeling Coyote doesn’t help, but eh, traveling around and doing what needs to be done on your own time – that’s the ticket. It got easier after mom died a year later. We met for the last time in her hospital after she called me; she was wasting away due to some kind of cancer she had never mentioned before. And I never paid much attention while the doctors were speaking; it didn’t matter. We connected, she passed away, and grandpa Ilias was all I had left. He gave me the Pontiac. Sweet ride, small consolation. After that, I traveled. Hunted. Spread information. Helped where I could, though some didn’t appreciate the Coyote bit. Surprise! I made it a point to seek out truth, punish the wicked, uphold the Litany where I felt it applied, and knock down the prideful a peg or two. Got me run out of more than one Sept, but hey, the thankless jobs are just that. I eventually ended up in Sept of the Pacific Sun, San Diego where I met this surfer Ragabash guy named Noah, and a Theurge named Brad. Finally found some guys unafraid to pack under Coyote and do a bit of good. Didn’t last as such things go. Brad left us to take care of some things, so Noah and I took to the road for a good year and some before decidin’ to try another Sept for at least a few months. Noah went his own way for awhile, and I got this job from a big to-do Silver Fang. Reputation precedes me, 'parantly. Not necessarily a good thing there, but the money was ...tempting, and he seemed to really want this runaway wife of his back. 'Course the guy seemed like a pompous ass, so we'll see if I play his little game. Anyhow, time to get to the road and start trackin'. =Fetish: Reuben’s Legacy= As heavy revolver: Damage 6L Range 35 yards, Rate 2, Clip 6, concealable in jackets. Activation: Make a gnosis roll (diff 6) or spend a gnosis point; the next shot from this gun is capable of some act of astounding trickery. (As usual, can’t spend Rage in the same round this is done). By rolling gnosis/spending a gnosis point, Coyote is essentially invited to participate in the firing of the gun to create a particular (useful) outcome. An empowered bullet can cause aggravated damage, but Coyote won’t play along as intended if the user is acting like a blunt instrument (and he may make the bullet act in some other useful way that amuses him more). Shooting a wall so the bullet ricochets and catches the enemy by surprise, or shooting an enemy after tricking them to lower their guard is much more pleasing to the spirit therein, if the user wishes serious damage. However, Coyote can only empower the bullet with one effect. Attempting to make a bullet ricochet impossibly and still hit the target won’t allow the bullet to still cause aggravated damage. Likewise, shooting the ground and having the bullet erupt in a burst of smoke or bright flash won’t cause any damage to anyone. Bans/Taboos: The user must indulge in tricks and practical jokes as often as possible (to create meaningful humor; sometimes it’s necessary to stop for awhile and wait to surprise people again later). The user also has a duty to recognize inflated pride, and knock it down a few pegs. Coyote prefers this be done with tricks and such, but is mollified so long as that pride is lessened in some meaningful degree. Coyote is also patient in this regard. =Pictures= Category:Character Archive